


underneath the same big sky

by junipergray



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Episode: s03e14 Pillows and Blankets, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Post-Episode: s03e14 Pillows and Blankets, Troy and Abed in the Morning, could be trobed pre-slash, god i love trobed, light cuddling, magical friendship hats don't fix everything, you can read it any way u want lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:34:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25010974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junipergray/pseuds/junipergray
Summary: Hey, dick. Read your dumb e-mail. Really enjoyed it. sent at 7:14pm (1/4)Guess what? You may have been my best friend, but we both know I was your first friend. sent at 7:14pm (2/4)And what I know, but you don’t know, because you have mental issues, is that you’re never going to have another friend. sent at 7:15pm (3/4)Because NOBODY ELSE WILL EVER HAVE MY PATIENCE WITH YOU. 7:16pm(4/4)-In which Troy and Abed work things out later that night, because the magical friendship hats weren't enough to solve everything.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 75





	underneath the same big sky

**Hey, dick. Read your dumb e-mail. Really enjoyed it.** sent at 7:14pm (1/4)

**Guess what? You may have been my best friend, but we both know I was your first friend.** sent at 7:14pm (2/4)

**And what I know, but you don’t know, because you have mental issues, is that you’re never going to have another friend.** sent at 7:15pm (3/4)

**Because NOBODY ELSE WILL EVER HAVE MY PATIENCE WITH YOU.** sent at 7:16pm (4/4)

Abed adjusted the placement of his magical friendship hat so it sat a bit further down his face as he re-read the text messages on his bunk bed. He figured it would make for more of a cinematic shot, with the light of his cell phone screen illuminating his face in the otherwise dark blanket fort. 

In all honesty, he didn’t need to read them at this point, he had already memorized every syllable and heard them echo around his mind. Absently, Abed wondered if Troy was silently in a similar situation in the bunk below him, reading his horrid email over and over in an attempt to numb the prickling sensation in his chest. 

He was sure his face held none of the turmoil he was experiencing, perhaps other than a slight furrowed brow, and imagined what Troy’s face must have looked like when he read what Abed had said. With a sigh, he put his phone down and rolled over to face the television.

“Abed?” The sound was almost deafening after the brutal silence of their fort was broken. Abed startled a bit and leaned over the bunk to look at Troy upside-down.

“Yes, Troy?” Abed said, trying to be quiet in case Annie was trying to sleep. He couldn’t see Troy other than a faint outline against the cotton walls, and heard the slight rustling of a paper before Troy got up from the bed and walked to the lamp, switching it on and looking at Abed in the newly lit room with an expression Abed had never seen on him before. 

“Why did you tell everyone all that stuff about me?” Troy held his eye contact with Abed, who had retreated slightly to the further side of the bunk. Abed’s gaze fell to his cell phone, then to his lap. He didn’t know what was worse, the overwhelming guilt at pointing out Troy’s shortcomings to acquaintances because of an intense pillow fight, or the pain of the harsh messages he had received in return, highlighting everything about his friendship with Troy he’d rather not think about.

“I wanted to make a pillow fort.” Abed answered, eyes still glued to his lap. It was a simple answer for a terribly loaded question. Sure, it started with preserving his craftsmanship, but quickly turned into a competitive streak he indulged to prove to himself that he wouldn’t sacrifice his craft for anybody, as much as he knew Troy wanted to break that record. In all honesty, he probably would have helped Troy with the blanket fort if he hadn’t yelled about always being the Constable Reggie of their Inspector Spacetime duo. Abed never thought of Troy as a silly sidekick, and thought he knew that the Inspector would truly be nothing without his Constable.

Troy obviously already knew Abed would be nothing without him, so why was a similar concept so hard for him to grasp? 

“And I wanted to make a blanket fort.” Troy took a step closer to the bed and Abed jerked his head up to look at Troy once again. His expression was the same.

“Not at first. We agreed on a pillow fort until you heard about the world record. We already started the pillow fort and I wanted to finish it. I had to see it through.” He blinked owlishly at Troy, hoping this wouldn’t turn into yet another argument. His friendship hat held its place, casting an invisible shadow over his eyes.

“Abed, sometimes people change their minds about things. Like, when I was a kid, I hated lasagna. It looked super gross. Then, my mom told me if I ate her lasagna I could have a popsicle, so I tried it, and now I think it’s dope. I change my mind a lot.” Troy leaned on the end table and crossed his arms. 

“Does that mean you’ll change your mind about me someday? And you won’t have patience for me anymore?” Abed said, trying to maintain his usually robotic tone, but even he could hear the fear slipping through. Across the fort, Troy perked up and his mouth dropped open a bit.

“Abed, no!” He rushed to the bunk and put a hand on Abed’s knee, pulling away quickly when Abed flinched at the contact. “You know I love you. I was just mad that we were only doing what you wanted to do, like the Inspector.”

“You’re not my sidekick, Troy. The Constable is just as important as the Inspector, if not more. And I was perfectly fine with you building a blanket fort, but you wanted to destroy my creation for yours. I wanted to finish what we started, but once you saw a way out in the form of a cheap award in a book no one’s read since 2006, you were willing to wreck it. People have patterns. One day you’ll get sick of me, like Ross and Rachel.” Abed fiddled his thumbs in his lap.

“But they got back together.” Troy’s eyebrows furrowed almost comically.

“It was never the same.”

“But we aren’t Ross and Rachel. We’re Troy and Abed.” Abed cracked a smile at that. A moment of silence passed between the two. 

“I didn’t mean what I said in the email in a bad way. They aren’t character flaws, they make you better. And you make me better. I don’t want you to get sick of me. You were right in your text, and I'm sorry for taking our friendship for granted. Thank you for your… patience.” Abed’s eyes flickered down at the last word. Troy’s face fell, but he didn’t cry.

“Abed… I didn’t mean what I said in the text at all. I wish I could unsend it or something, like if Inspector Spacetime was real I would find him and tell him to stop me from sending it,” Troy backs up and starts to climb the bunk ladder, settling into a sitting position adjacent to Abed. “I’m not here because I’m patient, I’m here because… you’re magical and being around you makes me feel magical too. I just said that because I knew it would hurt you, and that was dumb of me. You weren’t trying to hurt me, you were trying to win a dumb war I started becuase I wanted my picture next to that lady with the freaky long eyebrow hairs. I could never stop caring about you, because without you, life would be super boring and all I would think about is how much I miss you.” 

More silence passed. Abed reached behind him and pulled out his cell phone, turning it on and staring at the texts still on the screen for a moment. Troy’s eyes watered as he read over Abed’s shoulder what he had written only a day before. Abed looked at Troy for a moment, then looked back at his phone and quickly deleted the 4 messages from his phone. It was quiet; not just in the room, but in Abed’s mind as well. The words from the texts stopped swimming around mockingly, as if he had deleted them from his brain too.

“The Inspector wouldn’t be as good if the Constable wasn’t there. His curiosity would keep him from focusing on the danger at hand, and his lack of roots would eat at his empathy if Reggie didn’t help him find his way. I would be nothing without you, Troy.”

“That’s not true. We aren’t two halves of a whole, we’re two wholes that make an incredible unstoppable force. But yeah, life would be dumb if we didn’t have each other.” Troy leaned over and mimed pulling Abed’s magical friendship hat up a little further up his forehead, as if he knew Abed had pulled it down to hide his eyes. Abed’s face fell and his eyes stung. Leaping from his position on the bunk, he hugged Troy tightly. Troy seemed shocked at the sudden contact, but quickly melted into the embrace and squeezed Abed back.

When they pulled back a minute later, Troy reached into his pyjama top’s pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, throwing it at the small trash bin by the television. It landed a few inches away. Abed smiled at Troy and scooted back in the bed, laying down and patting the spot next to him. Troy laid down next to him and pulled the blanket over the both of them. 

And if Annie came in a few minutes after they started snoring lightly to turn the lamp off with a knowing smile, neither of them would be the wiser.

**Author's Note:**

> bro i need to write some trobed STAT please send prompts. also thank you so much for reading, i hope you enjoyed it! kudos & comments are very much greatly appreciated < 3


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